The eyes really are a window to the soul, according to scientists who have created a ‘mind-reading’ AI that can predict your personality from looking at small eye movements and blinking

The team say the work could revolutionise how we communicate with machines.

‘There’s certainly the potential for these findings to improve human-machine interactions,’ University of South Australia researchers Dr Tobias Loetscher said.

‘People are always looking for improved, personalised services.

‘However, today’s robots and computers are not socially aware, so they cannot adapt to non-verbal cues.

‘This research provides opportunities to develop robots and computers so that they can become more natural, and better at interpreting human social signals.’

Developed by the University of South Australia in partnership with the University of Stuttgart, Flinders University and the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany, the research uses state-of-the-art machine-learning algorithms to demonstrate a link between personality and eye movements.

Researchers tracked the eye movements of 42 participants as they undertook everyday tasks around a university campus, and subsequently assessed their personality traits using questionnaires.

WHAT DO YOUR EYE MOVEMENTS SAY ABOUT YOU?

Researchers led by Tobias Loetscher from the University of South Australia used machine learning to understand how eye movements and personality are related.

Forty-two students wore eye-tracking smart glasses while walking around campus and from this experiment they have created an AI that can predict someone’s personality.

– Curious people tend to look around more.

– Open-minded people stare at abstract images for longer periods of time.

– People who are neurotic usually blink faster.

– People who are open to new experiences moved their eyes more from side-to-side.

– People who have high levels of conscientiousness have greater fluctuations in their pupil size.

– Optimists spend less time looking at negative emotional stimuli (such as image of skin cancer) than people who were pessimistic.

This technology could be put in smartphones that understand and predict our behaviour, potentially offering personalised support.

They could also be used by robot companions for older people, or in self-driving cars and interactive video games.

Dr Loetscher says the findings also provide an important bridge between tightly controlled laboratory studies and the study of natural eye movements in real-world environments.

‘This research has tracked and measured the visual behaviour of people going about their everyday tasks, providing more natural responses than if they were in a lab.

‘And thanks to our machine-learning approach, we not only validate the role of personality in explaining eye movement in everyday life, but also reveal new eye movement characteristics as predictors of personality traits.’

‘Personality traits characterise an individual’s patterns of behaviour, thinking, and feeling’, researchers wrote previously in their paper published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

‘Studies reporting relationships between personality traits and eye movements suggest that people with similar traits tend to move their eyes in similar ways.’

Researchers found that people who were neurotic usually blinked faster while people who were open to new experiences moved their eyes more from side-to-side.

People who had high levels of conscientiousness had greater fluctuations in their pupil size.

Optimists spent less time looking at negative emotional stimuli (such as image of skin cancer) than people who were pessimistic.